Evolutions
by Tugboat Snail
Summary: Evolution: the gradual development of something into a more complex form. As the years passed, their chess matches evolved--as did their relationship. A missing-moments R/H fic; romance builds gradually. Rated for future swearing.
1. Year Two: Initiation

**A/N: **A missing-moments fic; starts in the Trio's second year. Romance builds gradually.

**Disclaimer: **If I owned HP, the last book would've been so very different. No ownage, profit, ya ta ta, now bugger off and read the fic.

* * *

_Year Two: Initiation_

* * *

Ron was befuddled.

He'd first heard the word a few years ago, and right after hearing it, he'd decided that he rather liked it. Had a nice ring to it. Even _sounded _all thick and murky. Nice word, that. Befuddled.

And that was what he was.

Hermione wasn't. Downright bloody definite, she was. Sitting perfectly upright in the chair across from him, arms folded snugly across her chest, staring at him. A bit unsettling, that. She hadn't looked away. Wasn't blinking. So he did.

"What?"

"Play chess with me," she repeated, just as demandingly.

Slowly, Ron closed his Potions book, torn between continuing to be befuddled and shrugging it off. He chose the former.

"Hermione, you hate Wizard's chess. 'Barbaric', as I recall."

"Yes, well, I've had a change of heart." She was starting to sound impatient. "Come on, I want to play you."

He shrugged. "Suit yourself." He slid out of his chair, retrieved the ragged old board from his dormitory, and returned to the table. He removed the pieces and motioned for them to set themselves up.

"Hope you're well prepared to lose, Hermione."

She glared. "I've watched you play Harry and your brothers long enough. I know your style, and I know how to beat you. I can beat anybody at this."

"Oh, so that's it. It's not good enough that you're already top of every class, you want to be the school champion at Wizard's chess now." She said nothing, only nudged a straying pawn back onto its square. "Well, you won't win, Hermione. You can't beat me."

"Oh, yes, I can." A self-assured smile crossed her face.

He snorted. "Prove me wrong, then. Go on."

Ten minutes later, when his bishop knocked Hermione's king over the head and gave a tiny yell of triumph, Hermione was scowling.

"Go on, then. Say it." He was grinning smugly, arms folded behind his head. He tilted his chair back onto two legs. "You're bad at something."

"I am _not!_" she shrilled, her hair seeming to fluff up more than usual in defiance.

"Suit yourself." He tilted further back, rocking slightly, and when he opened his eyes many seconds later she was still scowling at the chess board. He leaned forward, thumping the chair back onto all fours. "Want another match? You might get better with practice."

She wasn't mollified. "No," she said snootily, actually sticking her nose up in the air. "I'm done with chess tonight, I think."

"What's the matter? Afraid I'll slaughter you again?"

"Of course I'm not!"

But it was many weeks before she challenged him to a match again.

* * *


	2. Year Three: Peace Offerings

**A/N: **This is written in a slightly different style than the last chap, so before anyone tells me the style is different, yes, I know, I meant it to be. I'm probably going to toy around with different styles in each chap.

* * *

_Year Three: Peace Offerings Becoming Something More_

* * *

Chess became a peace offering during their third year. After so many of their spats and rows, the ratty old board would be dragged out, and a game would commence. The first few minutes of the game were always stiff and tense, but soon they both fell into the natural rhythm and relaxed, sliding into effortless, playful banter.

One match, though—and just the one—was spurred by feelings other than an desperate eagerness to shake off the awkward post-row formality.

Ron peeled his eyes away from the dust-coated, mildew-spotted pages of the book on hippogriff trials and looked across the table at Hermione—rather, at Hermione's personal wall of books and scrolls that were her safeguard from interruptions and noise. Sighing and arching his back to loosen the wound-taut muscles, he clapped the book shut and, choking in the resulting dust cloud, rubbed at his dry eyes. Which, actually, turned out to not be the brightest of actions, as his fingers were so thick with dust he ended up making his eyes worse.

Standing, he shuffled over to Hermione's side of the table and peered over the stack of books that focused on deciphering complex runes—how could there be so many books on one bloody topic, wouldn't they all say the same thing?—to see her scratching away at some essay. Over the next couple of minutes, the precise movements of her quill slowed gradually; she pressed the final period onto the parchment and, capping her ink bottle, leaned back slowly in her chair.

After a beat, Ron pointed at the essay. "Finished?"

She looked up at him with such a dazed look on her face he wondered if she hadn't been writing in her sleep. Then she gave her head a tiny shake and sat up a bit. "Yes, I…I think so?" Her voice rose in pitch at the end, turning the statement into a question. She stared at the trailing roll of parchment, a furrow on concentration etched into her forehead. "Yes, I am," she said, much more definitively, slumping back in her chair again. She closed her eyes and let her head fall over the back of the chair. Ron found the posture very un-Hermione and, for some reason, it made him uncomfortable. He shifted.

"Anything else due?" he asked, avoiding looking at her. Maybe it was because she looked so vulnerable. "Anything at all?"

She didn't lift her head, only shook it a fraction from side to side. "No, thank God. Everything's done."

A sudden flush rose in Ron's neck. "Right, then, go to bed." The words came out gruff and abrupt rather than caring, but—but for Merlin's sake, he was a fourteen-year-old boy, he didn't _do _caring.

Still, Hermione shook her head. "I can't, not when I'm this worn down. My mind is too…well, fried, I suppose. I'll have horrible nightmares if I fall asleep now."

Ron frowned. "What d'you do, then, if you don't sleep?"

She shrugged, still not lifting her head. "I stay awake until I've calmed down, or until morning." In one stiff, weary lurch, she leaned forward, setting her elbows on the table and massaging her temples, not looking at him.

Ron lingered, eyes darting around the room awkwardly, unsure of what to do. "Chess?" he asked at length, glancing at her.

She dragged a hand through her hair, finally looking up at him. "Yes, alright." And though her words had been half-sighed, she managed a small smile, letting him know she was just tired, not irritated by the suggestion.

So he fetched the ragged board and initiated the game. Given her rather frazzled state of mind, he should have won in roughly five minutes—but for once, he took it easy on her, because things were so hard for her then. Or maybe he was just abnormally unlucky in terms of chess that night. Maybe Hermione took more than half his pieces—including both of the precious knights that he always guarded so fiercely—by pure chance. Maybe she had a stroke of strategic brilliance that night.

Maybe.

* * *


	3. Year Four: Comply and Demand

**A/N: **Thanks to **irene **and **FloatingBubbles **for reviewing! Reviewz r teh kool.

* * *

_Year Four: Comply and Demand_

* * *

_Merlin, what a night. _Ron rolls over, presses his face into his pillow, and makes a vow to himself that he'll never attend a ball ever again, Yule or otherwise. Gritting his teeth, he drags himself out of bed and, running a hand through his hair, finds he's still got some maroon threads clinging to him. _Bloody perfect. Blasted sodding robes. I swear I'm burning them._

Ron knows he'll have to face Hermione sooner or later, so he throws on some clothes, grabs his chess board from his trunk, and heads down the stairs.

Cautiously peering around the doorframe and into the common room, Ron finds Hermione sitting at her usual table with a book thicker than Malfoy's head propped in front of her. He makes for the table, steeling himself as he walks.

He slaps the board down on the table, hard—he can _just_ hear the muted, though distinctly perturbed, shouts of the chessmen within. Hermione blinks at the hard, sharp snap of board-meets-table, but refuses to lift her eyes from her book. Ron flops down in the chair across from her. "Chess."

Her eyes flick up at his voice, then narrow as she looks alternatively at him and the board (which is still producing muffled complaints). Her gaze finally settles on his face, and last night's exasperation and anger still glint in her brown eyes. For almost a full minute they glare at each other, and Ron, thinking that this is going nowhere fast, decides to speak again.

"Chess." He nods at the board, which has now quieted.

And although it's a demand, she answers as if it were a desperate, melodramatic plead. "Yes, al_right_."

And so, with the air of doing him a great favor (and she is, really), Hermione carefully marks her place, sets the book aside, and waits expectantly.

Surprised that she's complied, Ron hurriedly slides the board open. The moment he does, every single chessman turns its face up to his and starts shouting in a high-pitched voice, gesturing wildly. Since all of them are shouting, Ron can't really make out what they're saying, but figures it's all pretty much the same.

"Sorry," he mutters to them, his ears tingeing pink.

"You should treat them better," Hermione says, her tone caught between amused and reproachful.

"I treat them fine!" Ron begins scooping the chessmen out of their storage area—though he takes special care to be extra-gentle with them. "I just make _one _wrong move, and now they've _all_ got their nuts and knickers in knots."

"You still hurt them." Hermione herds the black pieces towards herself, and Ron is surprised to see her give one of the pawns a gentle pat on the head with a fingertip.

Somehow getting the feeling that the conversation is no longer centered on irate chessmen, Ron flushes redder around the ears and motions for his pieces to set themselves up.

--

"Cheeky bastards."

"Well, what did you expect?" Hermione still has that bloody smirk on her face, and Ron scowls all the harder for it.

"I apologized!"

"Apparently that wasn't enough." Biting her cheek to try and keep her grin down, Hermione scans the board. Her eyes spark just as her smirk widens enough that her teeth are bared, and Ron gets a semi-familiar hot twinge in his stomach. "Bishop to D-5."

With a tiny bow in Hermione's direction, the bishop complies, scooting across the tiles. With a flourish, it knocks Ron's knight over the head and throws it bodily off the board.

"Thank you." The bishop bows again.

"Every single order," Ron mutters for the third time. "Every single one, disobeyed. _You," _he says, raising his voice and jabbing a finger at each of his remaining pieces in turn, "are _deliberately _making me lose!"

"Oh, calm down, Ron." Though utter exasperation has leeched into her voice, she's still smiling a bit. Ron's eyes flick from the pieces over to Hermione as she lowers her head to the chessmen's level. "I think you've tormented him enough," she says, her eyes sparkling with good humor. "Let up a bit. I know you like a _real_ game—let's actually _play_ now."

And Ron, eyes huge, watches as his pieces grumble but grudgingly bow to Hermione. _Just when did she start treating them like they're her friends? She only plays chess because it's something to do! She doesn't _like_ it, I _know _she only plays to humor me!_

_But_, he thinks as he proceeds to rally his pieces and properly stomp Hermione, _maybe Hermione enjoys things more than she lets on._

* * *


End file.
